For the Love of Dogs: My Life in Dog Years

Miza: A Very Bad Dog

Chapter 15       MIZA: A VERY BAD DOG

Dear Wattpad readers: This is chapter 15 from For the Love of Dogs: My Life in Dog Years by Jory Ames, offered as both paperback and Kindle at amazon.com and other retailers. Photos are included in the published versions. Thank you for reading!

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.   ―Dave Barry

Let me preface this by saying I believe all dogs should be rescues from animal shelters and humane societies. And some of the best dogs you can get are already grown, influenced by others, even by bad owners, such as Bobbie, Dane, and Schatzy were.

All three were adults when I found them, and each was a beautiful soul, although each was unique: Bobbie was insecure and needy; Dane was saintly and mature; and Schatzy was at first a little terrifying, then playful and loving, and finally, matronly.

In all my experiences, I have never had what I would consider a “bad” dog. Oh, Newt and Bailey, who weren’t actually mine, but Greg’s, weren’t the best behaved, I will admit. Bailey at first wanted to tree people we ran into on the trails, and Newt had his occasional biting issues. But in their hearts, they were good, and tried to be good. They both mellowed into fine friends.

But Miza, now. Miza is different. He is what I would call a bad dog. I sometimes expect the Dog Whisperer to show up and chastise me: “He needs to know you’re the pack leader!”

How I Chose This Particular Piece of Trouble

I certainly didn’t need another dog. I was living in Anchorage then, in the spring of 2009, back in the old neighborhood, with a small fenced yard and next-door-neighbors on the right who feared dogs (they own a fur store, so perhaps it was guilt?) and on the left, people who left their poor lonely Rottweiler outside, winter or summer (I’d sneak him chew toys through the fence). Greg, Winston, and I had moved from our four acres in Palmer to a tiny lot in the city with four large dogs: Schatzy, Blue, Chewie, and Newt.

Old age took Newt while I was on my first and only trip to Europe, stuck in the LaGuardia Airport trying to get home when the news came from Greg. So I suppose I was thinking of Greg, and how he now didn’t have a dog, and how Schatzy was now at least 14 and showing signs of nearing the end, when I agreed with my niece Rachel and my son to go to animal control to see a dog she liked; Rachel had been taking a camp that day and had met a really sweet gray dog she had taken to, and she decided Aunt Jory should adopt her. Generally, I don’t go to animal controls because I always adopt someone or try to rescue and find a home for someone.

She was a pit bull, as most of the dogs in the Anchorage shelter were that day, most abandoned there after some latest news story about a pit bull attack.

They all seemed sweet and kind and gentle enough, but I never had any intention of getting a pit bull. I had multiple dogs, walked in the dog parks every day, and didn’t need the risk or the headache of fearing whether my dog would suddenly attack or people would scream at me.

But I saw a little black and white boy, I guessed about a year old, and the sign on his cage said “pointer-lab.”

I liked him. He seemed happy and smaller than any dog I’d had, probably the size of a boxer. He was a boy like Newt, and mainly black with white like Newt, although certainly the breed was entirely different than Newt. To me he was just simply cute. And he needed a good home, and that was one thing I never doubted I could provide.